XXHighEnd

Ultimate Audio Playback => XXHighEnd Support => Topic started by: ringer on January 02, 2009, 12:35:59 pm



Title: MP3 and FLAC converts to WAV before playing?
Post by: ringer on January 02, 2009, 12:35:59 pm
Hi there,

New to XXHighEnd.  I love the sound quality of the player, however I'm not sure if it is misbehaving.  Every song that I play takes forever to start because the player is converting them to WAV format.  Is this normal?  I'm not used to this behaviour and it adds a pretty huge inconvenience factor, I can't even pause and resume play without it recreating the WAV file (which is called UnicodeTrack001.wav).


Title: Re: MP3 and FLAC converts to WAV before playing?
Post by: PeterSt on January 02, 2009, 01:27:22 pm
Hi,

If you don't tick the AA checkbox, it shouldn't take forever. But, you should tick "Start Engine3 during conversion" in the Settings Area.
A 10 minute track starts within a second here then (FLAC a few tenths of a second).
If it still takes ages with you, you have a very slow connection to the drive the music resides, and/or a very slow processor.

The reason why the tracks are converted to WAV in full before playback is started, is to guarantee no difference in SQ at playback. You may have heard about the perceived differences at various places, which just is true. The way it is done in XXHighEnd makes this impossible.
Note though that when you tick "Start Engine3 during conversion", SQ may be different during the time the tracks from the playlist are converted.
Lastly, note that you can select (Windows like) tracks in the playlist for playback, so if you want to hear a few tracks of the playlist only (never mind why you loaded them there in the first place) just select those few tracks and press Play.

Of course the above counts for Unattended Playback only, because otherwise all is done track per track.
And again, if you were playing Attendedly (which you shouldn't for best SQ), you must have something very slow in there.


The UnicodeTrack0001 thing is a bug for MP3 playback, which by itself may create errors from the ChangeWP thing. If it bothers you you can go to this post (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=659.msg4817#msg4817) and the Zip in it solves that.

Please ask if you have further problems.
Peter



Title: Re: MP3 and FLAC converts to WAV before playing?
Post by: ringer on January 03, 2009, 12:15:48 am
Hi Peter,

Sorry I should have clarified that I'm using XP Pro and I'm on the demo.  Here are some details:

- my output is a budget USB DAC
- the drive of the work directory is my main OS drive, its just a regular 7200RPM 400GB HD.  It's possible it is slow.
- I'm using a Core 2 Duo 2.2Ghz system
- I'm using Engine #1
- the AA checkbox is off
- it takes around 9-10 seconds before it is ready to play a 5minute FLAC!
- I can't click Unattended, it's not clickable.  I'm assuming this is a Vista feature.


Title: Re: MP3 and FLAC converts to WAV before playing?
Post by: PeterSt on January 03, 2009, 02:58:21 am
Ok.

Quote
- the drive of the work directory is my main OS drive

But where are the music files stored ? not on that same disk I assume ?

Peter